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The PERMA Model – A Study

Introduction

Everyone wants to be happy. Happiness makes people productive and good at relationships with everyone around them. However, if someone emphasizes solely on attaining happiness, she will feel unfulfilled. In this article, we will discuss about the PERMA Model. This helps people to realize what they should do for stress management.

Origin

Martin Seligman, a positive psychologist developed the PERMA Model which was published in the book “Flourish."

Idea

The five necessary components that should be present to make people feel good form PERMA. They are as follows.

(P) Stands for Positive Emotion

(E) Stands for Engagement

(R) Stands for Positive Relationships

(M) Stands for Meaning

Stands for Accomplishment/Achievement

PERMA in Details

# Positive Emotion

For a person to feel good, she needs to experience affirmative emotion. It is significant that a person enjoys herself as long as other components of PERMA are in order. The positive emotions are thankfulness, peace, fun, satisfaction, hope, inspiration or love.

# Engagement

When a professional is completely engaged in a task, she goes through a condition of flow wherein people lose any sense of time and concentrate on the project at hand.

The more engaged a professional is more are her chances of feeling good.

# Positive Relationships

Good relationships are important for the well-being of human beings. It is quite evident that those who have positive relationship with friends and family experience well-being.

# Meaning

Meaning is achieved when a professional serves a cause that is larger than her own self. Whether it is a particular religion or a cause that assists in the development of humanity, everyone needs meaning in their lives, so that they can feel good.

# Accomplishment/Achievement

Most people want to improve themselves when they are trying to attain an important objective or win a competition. Achievement is another significant thing that assists in a person’s capability to flourish.

Implementing PERMA Model

# Positive Emotions

A person cannot be happy all the time, but she should ensure that she experiences affirmative emotions like peace, contentment and inspiration. If a professional thinks that there is lack of affirmative emotions in her life, she should think if her career lets her use her qualifications.

She should also think about things and people that provider her pleasure such as family members. She can keep pictures of her family members on her desk.

She should try to bring positive emotions in her life and make sure that she does not avoid doing these things till the next time or she will never be able to do them.

# Engagement

It is important for a resource to be engaged in her tasks.

Work engagement can be increased by reducing distractions. As a result, the resource is engaged in work and able to face challenges in work.

She should also spend some time for pursuing her hobbies. Personal time is very important which people forget when they are much stressed.

# Positive Relationship

An employee should maintain positive relationships with people around her, be that family, friends or colleagues.

Since, a resource spends most of her waking hours at work; she should make it a point to have good relationship with her colleagues. If friends or family are not supportive or positive, she should try to identify the reason behind their negative attitude. She should try to get close to those people who matter and make the relationships strong.

She should spend time with a friend or a family member at least once a week on a regular basis. Since, engagement builds relationships; they are made strong when a person makes an effort to maintain a connection with others. She should also realize how far her relations are positive. If they do not want to be positive she should not waste much time or effort on building them.

# Meaning

The resource should understand if her life and work are connected. This means that she has to connect her own objective with the objective of the company.

Most people want to believe that they are working for the greater good. Thus, employees should be able to find meaning in their work.

For this to happen, finding meaning in personal life like, spending time with family members, volunteering to participate in charitable activities, etc are important. These things add meaning to life.

# Accomplishments/Achievement

Achievement and accomplishment is the most interesting part of PERMA.

In many places, achievement is very important to gauge the capability of a resource. In these societies if a person is not busy trying to pursue her dreams, she is considered to be lazy and not fulfilling her own and the society’s expectations. However, if a person constantly pushes herself to achieve her dreams she might get tired. If an employee thinks that she is not devoting enough time in pursuing her dreams, she should get started.

She should also try to identify what she wants to achieve in her life. If a person feels that she is devoting a lot of time to her achievements and not giving any importance to her personal life, she should pull back and think about the other components of PERMA. This can provide a better balance in life.

To Wrap Up

From the above article, it can be deduced that if a person has to be successful in her life and career, she has to follow the PERMA theory. The theory talks about the importance of positive emotion, engagement, relationship that is affirmative in nature, meaning in life that is connected to the objective of the employee in the company with the objective of the organization and last but not the least is the accomplishment of achievement. There are also different ways of implementing these components of PERMA. However, the professional should make it a point to understand that excess use of any of the components is not always good. For example, if she is constantly trying to accomplish her dreams and in the process ignores her personal life, it is harmful to maintain positive relationships and stay engaged in hobbies. Again, staying positive is also very important to be successful and happy in life.